Yahoo plans to release some technologies, including storage technologies, to the open source community, a senior executive of the company said. These are systems that Yahoo built to help it handle large numbers of users on its websites, but that don't necessarily give it a competitive advantage, said David Chaiken, chief architect at Yahoo, in an interview in Bangalore on Friday.

What do they have to gain by making their product difficult to remove? I have had a similar experience with several other Yahoo products. It only serves as a short term gain with the impact of alienating the customer base long term.

I'd argue (without having any insider knowledge, just vanilla punditry) that we're not Yahoo's customer base; those who don't know how to really use (or troubleshoot) computers, are.